Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday July 24, 2011 @03:50PM
from the evolving-attitude dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In an 8-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers — and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC."

Most of it was depressing, I agree. A few (and I really do mean, a *few*) responses were encouraging--Miss California's for example.

It's amusing how so many responses follow the same, superficial notion of "teach both sides! Knowledge is good! Let people make up their own minds!" That misses the whole point entirely. The question itself is poorly phrased. Evolution isn't something that requires belief, at least not in the sense of personal faith. It isn't something that you "should" or "should not" be taught. Evolution by natural selection MUST be taught, if you are to teach biology. To not do so would be like attempting to teach mathematics without discussing multiplication, or chemistry without talking about the periodic table, or American history without mentioning the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Thus, to ask the question "should evolution be taught in schools" is no different than asking "should biology be taught in schools," or more broadly, "should SCIENCE be taught in schools." You can't separate the two.

You can't really blame these contestants for being so hopelessly ignorant. They didn't get on that stage with their brainpower.

You deserve to be flamed, if only for your blatant ignorance of biology. There is no difference between micro and macro evolution.

The concept that there is a difference is a "talking point" (read: "logical fallacy") promoted by cretins... sorry, creationists. Since their first stance - "Nobody has ever seen evolution happen" - has been conclusively disproved by the existence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, they've moved the goalpost, created an imaginary distinction between micro and macro evolution and pretended that macro evolution hasn't been observed.

So it's at least two fallacies for the price of one. And it's biologically incorrect. You will never, ever see a credible biologist talk of macro and micro evolution, and seeing a person claim a distinction should be a red flag as to their dishonesty or ignorance, depending on how kindly you wish to view them.

In genuine biology, what creationists call macro evolution is instead called speciation. And it's universally understood that speciation occurs as a result of the accumulation of small changes, i.e. what a creationist calls micro evolution. Now, not only has speciation been observed, making the "Nobody has seen macro evolution" argument outdated, but pretending that there must exist a single speciation event, rather than an accumulation of change, makes the creationist's argument more convincing. They're playing on the general public's ignorance of biology.

but pretending that there must exist a single speciation event, rather than an accumulation of change

Kind of on that note: One day a few years back I was walking along a trail in the jungles of Hawaii with my extremely-religious aunt. As she was admiring all the beautiful flora and fauna she said "This is proof that God must exist. How else could all this beauty just instantly appear out of nowhere?" I wanted to say something but didn't feel like debating with a religious psychopath who also happens to be a family member that I love and don't really want mad at me. But that right there showed me that they really don't understand what evolution means. Perhaps it's because they don't care to investigate and learn about it, or maybe the information is simply overwritten and blocked by their belief in an almighty creator. Who knows? The fact is it's hopeless to try and teach them actual science.

"As she was admiring all the beautiful flora and fauna she said "This is proof that God must exist. How else could all this beauty just instantly appear out of nowhere?""

For what it's worth, when faced with this in the past my response has been to tell them to think of a beautiful plant, such as an orchid like a Phaleonopsis, or a large cactus such as a mature Echinopsis in full bloom, and to imagine growing it from seed. You start out with nothing but a pot with brown mud in it and a little seed, but then

" without adding in a bunch about Macroevolution which we *can't* prove(Did *you* see personally see fish evolve into something else? )"

Certainly we can forget about teaching stars are hot gas spheres because, you know, you never touched one of them to know they are hot, do you? Or certainly, tell the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, because nobody was there to tell.

Evolution by mutation is a coherent theory and it is the one that best fits with observations up to the point to detect genomic transloca

That's the usual mistake creationists make when feebly trying to punch holes into evolution. "But have you seen macroevolution?" No. Why? Because it takes fuckin' eons and even I ain't that old. "How could a fish evolve into something else? How can a monkey become a human?" Not at all. They just happen to, most likely as far as we can tell today, have a common ancestor. Why did they "split up"? How about separations of populations?

But here is a question for creationists: Why do we only have one heart? It's

But here is a question for creationists: Why do we only have one heart? It's a SPoF in the design of us
Why asks creationists and not scientists? The scientists could give you a perfectly plausible answer why one heart is the appropriate number for our body. One heart seems to work perfectly fine for species that weigh 1/1000th of what we do up to ones that weight 10,000 times what we do.
Did you know that muscles in your feet help to pump blood back to your heart?

Why do you imply that I do not know better than God? From an engineering point of view, God is a pretty crappy engineer. From what I see when I look out there into the animal kingdom, he seems to be one that subscribes to the "try and error" approach. Oh, let's see, we have something with four legs. Let's try 6. How about 8? How about a few dozen? Does that improve it... erh... doesn't seem to. Dump it, retry something else. And so the poor millipede is still trying to sort out walking.

I guess every student should get 100% for every test, as it's up to each student to decide what they believe in. Like 2+2=5 for some students.
That is not a fair comparison. We decided how to count and add and such, so we can say that yes, 2+2=4. However, science is not something that we decided to dictate as true. It is something that we have to test and study and try to find explanations for why stuff is the way it is. There is no "truth" in science. Just a series of ever-more precise approximations.
We

The parent post is currently modded "funny", and while the post should definitely be modded up, "funny" is not what I'd associate with that video. It's sad, especially because it's so recent. And these vacant mannequins are held up as "role models"? This isn't just sad, it's genuinely harmful.

If you turn to beauty queens for scientific insights, you might want to get your reality sense adjusted. Seriously, based on their experience as beauty queens (ignoring all other achievements they might have reached, I'm not saying beautiful=dumb) I'd at best see them as experts when it comes to the ground shaking question which lipstick is colorproof and doesn't smear on his sleeve.

Certainly not on biology or anything else that remotely requires any kind of scientific background.

Listening to most of them, almost all of them say the same thing regardless of their personal point of view.

The question appears to be: "Should evolution be taught in schools?" I'd say that that's a biased question right there.
Their answers were mostly: "Both evolution and faith should be taught so that people can make up their own minds."

Obviously, if you want to be voted the winner, you don't want to alienate a huge chunk of voters. (I don't know who votes, judges or viewers. Not that it matters.) So

There were 51 contestants. 48 said that evolution should be taught. 2 said that evolution should not be taught. The remaining contestant didn't voice an opinion. Of the 48 contestants who said that evolution should be taught, 19 said that both it and creationism should be taught. The question was ambiguous, so it's hard to tell (without sketchy inferences) how many of the remaining 29 contestants who said that evolution should be taught also believe that creationism should be taught. I don't find this terri

Nah, the board just evolved. As the electorate gets more worried about the future of their kids who might not be able to compete in the global marketplace, the board members who adopted a more pro-science stance prospered. And those who have stuck to a 2000 year old mind-set got weeded out. Well, that is just the theory.

US still need to work a lot. 51% [cbsnews.com] of americans do not believe in evolution.

A lot of work has been put into conversational doublespeak such that the same word "believe" is used for both:

1) Irrational brainwashed notions to be assumed unthinkingly as fact; evidence is irrelevant because if in support, duh, if not in support, its just devil testing the viewer.

2) Scientific bets made using this theory haven't been proven wrong yet, despite immense intellectual effort, so its unlikely to be proven completely wrong in the future.

It's intentional that conversations are phrased that way... keeps the masses under control and unthinking.

Personally I don't "believe" in evolution either, at least not in the first sense above. I think its about 1e100 times more likely that evolution is correct than any one of the ten thousand mutually incompatible known non-extinct religions is correct.

Don't count on it just now. This is just politics evolving... whoops! Did I just say evolving? I meant they are seeing new politics in creation. Well, you get what I am saying right?

I think we are seeing the decline in the popularity of religion in politics. At first it seemed like a great way to get a whole bunch of people to vote for you and support you in office... but then they realized that they have a bunch a crazy fanatical people following them. Ever try to manage a group like that? Even in s

What happened is this - a bunch of slashdotters who appear to be obsessed with the notion that there are a lot of people who believe in creationist theories (even though they are a tiny minority) are now surprised that there is hardly anyone who thinks teaching creationism is a good idea.

They might be a minority, but there's still enough of them so as to pose a threat to education in the US. Or have you not noticed all the "Intelligent" Design proponents that have been having success watering down the science curriculum.

I bet you would rather do away with school boards all together and have some imperial science council decide what people should lean. Hell, why not just control what they believe too? That would fit best into your little control freak mind.

They could hardly do worse.

In fact, having a baby point to the books he thought were pretty would hardly be a less effective method of picking public education curricula.

Oh, and let's also explain exactly what a virgin is and what that's all about. Since they may ask what that is, and we mustn't lie.

Excuse me: I have a pretty good explanation of what all that's about. It seems to be nothing more [wikipedia.org] (or less) that a recurring mythos [wikipedia.org] in human culture.

Of course, when these myths were popularized, there wasn't the Gutenberg press, or the internet, or any sort of mass communication to raise people's awareness that "Hey! Isn't that the same as THIS story over here? What're you trying to sell us?!?" But now, people have to simply be Willfully Blind to not see the parallels in these myths.

And before the Thumpers start rationalizing "Those aren't myths. Those are simply different accounts of the same events.", keep in mind that the spread of these myths completely parallels the trade-routes of the day.

Nope. The FSM mythos is, and always has been, spread by those who have seen it as a way to bring power and wealth to themselves.

Maybe it's different in the USA, but that's what happened in my school. The textbooks didn't just present evolution as some magical theory with no context, they explained the context around the development of the theory, the evidence for it, and contrasted it with the divine creation idea that was popular at the time of Darwin. The physics textbooks did the same, for example discussing the luminiferous aether and the experiments that were done to disprove it. They started right in the first science lessons before we even split lessons into biology, physics, and chemistry, by explaining requirements for a scientific theory (such as falsifiability) and using some religious beliefs as counterexamples.

It sounds like the bigger problem in the USA is science being taught as religion, not religion being taught as science.

A Mathematical Model of Social Group Competition with Application to the Growth of Religious non-Affiliation, is listed at Cornell University Library, and was last revised in January 2011.
The study noted that there is a steady increase in the numbers of those who claim to belong to no religious group in nine countries, and its mathematical formula showed religion will be extinct in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Switzerland, according to

If only that were true. According to this article from Discover magazine and published in 2009 only 35% of Americans [discovermagazine.com] believe that humans evolved from mammals. What's nice about the Discover article is that it breaks the US down by region. New England and the Mid-Atlantic states lead in scientific literacy, and the south (East South Central of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi) brings up the rear. That Texas has decided to support scientific literacy in it's schools is a wonderful surprise.

Not even remotely true. In the area I come from, the creationist strategy is simply changing.

When I was just a child there was a community not far from my home that had maybe ten houses and an ultra-fundamentalist church with 50 or so members. I went to school with some of the members' kids, and it led to some very interesting conversations (and I was raised in a liberal-ish Lutheran congregation, so its not as though I'm at all hostile to Christianity).. Anyway, that congregation has something like quadrupled in size, and is currently adding on a youth center and a gym to "keep the kids out of sin." Presumably there will eventually be an ultraconservative private school there, since the people that attend that church are fed up with not getting their way in our local school districts (although I vividly remember having to watch creationist propaganda in eighth grade science class, though at that time no one said anything.). A friend of mine growing up, from a different church (hes baptist), told me in college he learns the biology textbook to pass the tests, but refuses believe any of it. I imagine that will be the line the private religious school will take too.

I guess the point I'm making is that creationist teaching is just going underground. These people are segregating themselves and becoming more radical, which is providing the illusion that the creationist line of thought is in decline and the attack on science is relenting. It isn't. Segregated communities are indoctrinating kids from day one, then sending them to conservative colleges and law schools where they are trained to enter government and undermine it from within. Representative Bachmann is a prime example, she doesn't even deny that was the mission of the law school she attended.

I'll end with this tidbit: ever wonder why ultraconservatives were pushing so hard for a school voucher system? Could it be that such a system would make it frighteningly easy for this type of behavior to flourish, by essentially subsidizing extremist institutions? Just my take on things of course, but it disturbs me as someone inside the scientific community.

A friend of mine growing up, from a different church (hes baptist), told me in college he learns the biology textbook to pass the tests, but refuses believe any of it. I imagine that will be the line the private religious school will take too.

You're right about their desire to set up their own schools, with the government picking up as much of the expense as they get get, but the curriculum in those schools simply don't include evolution, except perhaps for a cartoon form designed for easy refutation. That's the way they work today, according to people who've attended them.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with refusing to believe what's in the books. A doctoral student of Stephen J Gould was a plant by the Moonies - they paid for his Harvard education so they could have a PhD biologist arguing against evolution. (It didn't work; his research has been in a non-evolutionary field, and he's been noticeably silent on the subject of evolution.) But when Gould was asked about this student, who had publically said that he doesn't believe in evolution, Gould responded that, in order to earn a doctorate, the student had to show mastery of the material. Science doesn't compel belief.

You're right about their desire to set up their own schools, with the government picking up as much of the expense as they get get

Not in my experience. I attended 13 years of a fundamentalist Baptist school, and they were adamant about not taking government funding -- in ANY form. Still are (even though they're hurting financially). That is, in my experience, the norm and not the exception. Stated reason is to minimize the potential for government interference in school curriculum and other operations.

On topic, I had a bit of animosity toward the school for failing to properly teach me evidence-based science. I had animosity towa

I think the more scary side of the coin is the 'my way or the highway' evolutionists. They do not even want to hear a different idea. They openly mock the other side. Science itself becomes better with people asking 'what if'. Yet none of them will hear it. On most boards instead of talking about it in a rational manner the degenerate into name calling (very quickly). Now I am not saying the creationists are not doing this as well but the creationists should be thanking their gods for them.

You have it a bit wrong. It's not that they don't want to hear a different idea, or that they don't want people to ask "what if". They want the idea to be scientific in nature, meaning that:

- it's testable

- it's falsifiable

- it has predictive power that is comparable to the leading theory

If your idea doesn't fit the last one, then it's not a competing theory, and if it doesn't fit the first two, it's not scientific. The only thing we've seen from creationists is Intelligent Design, which fits none of

Back in the 1930s, according to Thor Hyerdahl, the Lutheran school he went to taught him two things about creation that should have made everyone happy:God did it.Darwin worked out some things about how it happened.

Most of the fundamentalists opposition to evolution is that it is really just a soft target in an anti-intellectual attack. The poorly educated lay clerics running those groups see the educated as a threat to them expanding their flocks just as they saw the educated clergy of the established ch

This fight is between people who think that knowledge primarily comes from what is already known, often called common sense, or from new knowledge developed from careful observation of the world or study of historical documents.

In Texas, as in much of the world, many people want to think the former is The Way. It leads to simpler conclusions, does not require one to constantly educate oneself, and in general does not cause disruption of the business cycle. This world view is very seductive and is appeal

Correct in so many ways. Science does not actually *prove* anything. Science merely says that the current theory can not be disproven with current methods and knowledge. It's the reason science grows in knowledge over time, the reason that theories develop and grow more refined over time. It's why science is the better and more rational solution, because it accepts that there are facts that are not presently known or understood. Religions generally and unfortunately don't acknowledge that there are limits t

It is an essential part of democracy to debate issues even when they seem obvious. You have the right to be heard even when no one wants to listen, not because of haughty idealism but because people turn obnoxious or even violent when they are ignored.

No, you have the right to be heard because even if we as a society have a hard time believing in darwinism for ecology we are strong proponents of it for philosophy. You should be heard because, if your idea has any merits we believe those merits will influence others to join your side, and we believe in general that the best ideas will win out.

That entire concept is what politics and democracy are about. Though, I worry that our scientific understanding of how to influence people along with the personifica

A bit on the wrong side, aren't you? Evolutionary theories aren't dogma - like most scientific theories they are constantly being revised as new discoveries are made, and they form a central part of the the basis of modern biology. "Free thinkers" who profess the "religious creationism in a fancy dress" like Intelligent Design are pushing forward conclusions that predate genetics and other discoveries. Are there other conclusions (made thousands of years ago by nomadic tribesmen sitting around a campfire) you also will consider more valid than modern science? Should we perhaps abandon these fancy cars for trusty old camels?

Evolution deniers are skeptics in much the same way Holocaust deniers are skeptics. Should history classes teach historical revisionism? Or what about introducing contra-factual history ("what if" scenarios) at an early age to sow confusion? Should physics classes also teach the element-based world view? How about re-introducing the liquid balance principles in medicine?

Well, to be fair, one of those nomadic tribesmen did nail the statistical upper-bound of lifespan of man for the next few thousands of years, across billions of future people, with one try, with no internet to use for research, and no medical training.

Feel free to apply science to produce a more accurate number, though. Next 4000 years, oldest living man, starting with massive advantage to you in terms of baseline knowledge available to reference to make your prediction.

Keep guessing about everything and eventually you may get something right. Even a broken clock etc. In addition, please explain yourself better; exactly WHAT was the prediction and where has it been sourced from... or don't you like your random claims being examined?

You can read it yourself, and google the age of the oldest living man. As well as the age at which all these billions of people die off, statistically.

And, you need to learn probability. Only one guess was made, only one guess was possible, given that the specific number was codified in a document that has persisted over those thousands of years. "Eventually get something right" is totally inapplicable to this case, not as a matter of theology, but as a matter of how probability and reality w

My guess is they lose half the nation (by population) if they approve creationism (with a quarter supporting the change, and a quarter not caring). There is a risk to losing their power by being crazy.

I'd love to see the textbook power shift to CA, as they are supporting open textbooks, which could save the education system billions/year. In both royalties, and the ability to use paperless solutions.

This is the second time in two weeks I've had mod points. Apparently NOT visiting slashdot is how you get picked. (shrug)

Back on topic:

Why do people keep posting things like "even texans have to evolve"? Maybe I've spent too much time listening to College PC curricula, but that strikes me as being highly offensive. Imagine replacing "texans" with "women" or "blacks" or "retards" instead.

Congratulations on actually living up to your sig considering the circumstances. Seriously, I'm not trying to be funny. I'm glad you replied rather than down-modding. Seems to be the way on/. now to just abuse mod points.

Well, every family has to have the option to decide how to teach their children and what their believes are, so they should have to have the option to teach alternate views about gravity.

After all is not as if you can prove gravity since you never saw it. Yes, you see apples falling, but you didn't see gravity. I am of the believe that apples do fall because that's the God will, and I feel that if those statments from that Newton guy (who's Newton, after

The problem is that these people grow up to be politicians and policy makers. They wreck the economy and go to war [google.es] based on their beliefs then expect the people who learned enough in school to get a proper job to pay the bills for the cleanup.

So... yes. It matters. Religion is NOT a harmless hobby like collecting stamps or arguing Ford vs. Chevy over a beer. Atheists do need to be active/militant against it.

"Redefining basic words"... you mean, like you just tried to do and failed? Insertion of gene sequences by artificial methods does not invalidate common descent. The bulk of the genetic material remains the same and implies a common ancestor. You may have to go a little further back to include the 'added' sequences, but that doesn't invalidate common descent. It just occured to me, I shouldn't be arguing with an irrational person... you won't try to understand, you won't even care.

We do not need better terminology. We need people to understand terminology. It is not terminology's fault if people like you do not understand common descent. I do suggest that you read about it. There is more to understand than just the two words in the name. But we can start with those, I suppose.

Common descent is the hypothesis that life arose once, and all life on Earth at this time is therefore a result of this. We call this "descended" meaning that we arose later in time as a result of the first. Those cats are descended from other cats. Period. Common descent is unbroken. They didn't appear out of the aether, they are the offspring of cats. They just had some viruses ram some extra genes in there. But viruses have been doing that forever. It's not new. What's new is humans picking which genes get shuffled about. I'm not sure what your problem is, and I certainly don't see how it relates in any way at all to intelligent design.

Design is the concept that life has been designed by something. But where is YOUR definition of your unqualified terminology? Obviously ever since sexual reproduction, life forms have been "designing" their species by selecting their mates. So is all life designed? Or does that count as part of the process? If it does, does genetic engineering count? Humans are alive, don't forget. But at any rate, design and common descent are not mutually exclusive. You can have common descent, but where space aliens came down and poked at some DNA to guide evolution. And you can have a completely evolution driven system, with no external design, but have multiple origins of life, and thus no common descent.

And so, to your absolute proof that common descent is impossible, and design is true, I raise you the real definition of common descent. There can be no absolute proof of common descent, but since every single life form on earth now has at least a handful of common genes, many of which don't do anything anymore, the case for common descent is a powerful one. You can try to falsify it with "A WIZZARD DID IT" (With an egg and watercress sandwich) but that's just silly. Now it's possible that life arose multiple times, but only one survived, but that's still common descent. And it's possible that it arose twice, and because form follows function, we just got the same genes twice...seems a big stretch, but possible. And it's also possible that it arose twice, and we got common genes because of those aforementioned viruses doing their best to muck up the works. Yeah, we can't know for sure. But all things being equal, common descent is the simplest explanation.

For whether or not we were designed, that's something that cannot be answered, and as such is pointless to discuss in terms of the science of it. Well, it could perhaps be answered. We could find preserved DNA and maybe observe inserted genes with such prevalence that it presents a very powerful case for some outside designer inserting those genes. But we haven't. And I doubt we will. You can go right on believing that Jesus or Aliens designed our DNA. But there's no evidence of that. An open minded scientist (which sadly is not all of them) would not care that you believe that, as long as you do not let it poison your mind against actual observations. And as I said, those observations very strongly indicate common descent. But certainly it can end up being wrong. All we have to do is find life that doesn't have any common genes with everything else we've seen on Earth, and there you have it. But at any rate, it's mostly philosophy. It would be absolutely fascinating if life arose twice on Earth. But it certainly wouldn't say a THING about evolution one way or the other.

And you are one of the many who don't even bother to learn enough about evolution to criticise it properly. Here's an idea for you, maybe some niches are filled by primates that were successful enough that there was no evolutionary pressure to evolve further? Maybe the existence of a particular species doesn't preclude similar species from existing? Idiot.

[...] the Church recognized that it probably didn't happen in 6 days as explained in Genesis. Something people must understand is that Genesis was written over 2500 years ago when scientific understanding what nothing compared to what we have today. The literary styles used back then were also quite different.

Yes, of course, because 2500 years ago they must have understood that the sun rising, and then falling, meant something other than a "day" to The Gods.

If man evolved from apes, then why do we still have apes? Why didn't all species evolve like man supposedly did?

Taking your question to the extreme, "Why do we still have bacteria?" Or, "Why do we still have minerals and vegetables, shouldn't it all be animal by now?" The answer is not all things evolve at the same time, and some things have found a "stable maximum" so they don't need to evolve to thrive in their (current) environment.

You had grandparents, and for the moment lets assume you have a cousin. Let's label your grandparents all "doctors" and we'll also label your cousin a "doctor", and we'll label you a "cardiologist".

Now, the question you asked is.... if you evolved from doctors, why does your cousin exist?

And just to make the picture even more clear, just because you generally refer to yourself as a "cardiologist" does not change the fact that you are still in fact a "doctor". Just because you generally refer to yourself as "human" does not change the fact that you are still an "ape" and that you are still a "mammal".

Humans and dogs and lions and horses and whales are all mammals. We all evolved from the same mammal ancestor.

Why didn't all species evolve like man supposedly did?

That's like asking why all species didn't evolve like horses. All species did evolve. They live in different places or eating different things or surviving in different ways, and they all evolve to get better at their specialty.

Humans, horses, hippos, lions, whales, and chimpanzees are all mammals. At one time there was just a single mammal species. Those mammals had lots of children, and over generations they spread out to live in many different places in many different ways and eating many different things. Over time some mammals lived on grasslands eating grass, and evolved the ability to run really fast and really far to escape predators. Those mammals evolved into the horses we see today. Some of those mammals specialized in living in and near water, and they evolved into the hippos we see today. Some mammals survived by hunting, and they specialized into the lions and other carnivores we see today. Some mammals started out living in and near water like hippos, but further adapted to an entirely aquatic lifestyle.... those are the mammal whales we see today.

And some mammals adapted to a certain style of forest life, evolving into chimpanzees (and other "apes") we see today.

And along the way, some of those forest-dwelling primates moved out onto the grasslands and standing upright. And this freed up our hands to be able to make and use tools. To specialize in making and using tools.

When whales moved into the water, when they evolved to specialize in living in water, the land mammals kept evolving too. Land mammals continued to evolve to be better at living in the place (and way) they lived. Carnivores evolved into better carnivores while whales adapted to aquatic life.

Some primates were living in the forest and some primates moved out onto the grasslands... the ones that kept living in the forest evolved to be even better at living in the forest while the ones on the grasslands evolved to stand upright and specialize in using our hands to make and use tools... to specialize in bigger brains.

Everything is always evolving. It's just that a single species spreads out to live in different places or different ways, and then splits into separate groups that evolve in different directions getting better at different specialties.

Asking why gorillas didn't evolve the same size brain as us is like asking why hippos can't run as fast as horses. Hippos are protected against lions by swimming into (and under) the water, and horses are protected against lions by their speed and endurance at running.

Chimpanzees got better at climbing through the trees. We got better at standing up and swinging a treebranch as a club or throwing a rock.... and eventually at sharpening that branch into a spear and chipping that rock to a point. Other primates kept on evolving while we evolved.

And don't underestimate how difficult and expensive it was for us to evolve our modern brains. Your brain accounts for only about 2% of your body mass, but you burn over over 30% of your food just to fuel it. Humans require a continuous and ridiculously high energy diet to fu

The theory of evolution doesn't attempt to answer all the riddles of the universe. It's just an explanation for how life developed on earth.

This is a victory. Anti-intellectuals in Texas attempted to make their schools even worse than they currently are by teaching children 'alternative theories to evolution.' The problem is, there is no viable alternative theory to evolution that is both logical and backed up by evidence. As one learns in logic 101: "knowledge is justified true believe." The scientific com